Chapter 7

You’d think I’d never been away. Actually, for most people, I hadn’t. Gillian and Karen knew, of course, and Dulcie, but hardly anyone else noticed I’d been away. At Open House, I was greeted warmly, but without comment. I didn’t mention Suki, but as the visitors were thin on the ground anyway, no one asked. At the end, before leaving for work, I spoke to Jeanne.

“Don’t ask about Suki, but she won’t be back, not soon, anyway. If anyone asks, you haven’t seen her and you’re a little worried, okay?” She looked at me strangely. “She’s okay,” I told her, “but she’s making a change. Someone from her old life might want to get her back.”

“But she’s okay?”

“So far. She might not make it, but she’s in a safe place as long as no-one tracks her down.”

She cocked her head, thinking. “Okay. I’ll trust you.”

And that was it. Back in the groove. Counselling, Open House, Church most Sundays. Often Sunday lunch with the Marshalls. Sometimes a weekend at my parents’, sometimes, if the weather and tides were especially right, a long weekend in Tranquillity in some isolated creek.

Rudi – Suki’s pimp – showed up at Open House third week of January. Not what I would have expected. Well dressed, not flashy. Jeanne met him, brought him in for coffee. “Suki? Haven’t seen her since before Christmas.”

“Just we ... me and her friends ... are a bit worried about her.”

“So are we, when one of our regulars doesn’t turn up.”

He stayed long enough to drink most of his coffee and question the others, but got the same response, more or less. When he spoke to me, I just said, “Haven’t seen her for ages. Miss her, actually – she’s bright and happy. Most of the time anyway.”

He didn’t pursue that.

No, I didn’t talk to Dulcie – or Karen. Neither did he turn up again. But I was content in a way. Bastet adjusted surprisingly well to a sailing boat under way, but just occasionally stayed out on the tiles all night.

Easter came – an early Easter – and the wild geese began to leave for Siberia and points north. I’d miss their constant conversations until the Autumn. I kept my promise to Gillian and when Karen was back in school I took her on Brian to Hyde Hall. It was an enjoyable day. I don’t really do gardens, but Gillian’s company was enough to make it a good outing. I learned about what to expect, and that later in the year there would be other things to see. Azaleas, Camellias and Rhododendrons, for example. We didn’t have to rush back as Karen was having tea with a friend. Walking back to Brian, I said, “I’ve enjoyed today. Perhaps you’d like to come back later in the year?”

She frowned, but said, “I’d like that a lot.”

A call from Sheffield. End of May. I’d been intending to use the Bank Holiday weekend to go for a sail. Instead, I had Frank Firth on the phone.

“Can you come to Sheffield? Talk to Suki? Please?”

Bank Holiday weekends are notorious for poor weather. Rain isn’t actually too bad in a boat, because one’s often in oilies anyway for the spray. But at least it was warm and, on Friday at least, dry. Brian got me to Sheffield in six hours, including a couple of stops, and I was welcomed into the Firth home with a steak-and-kidney pudding supper. And beer from a local micro-brewery. My appetite was diminished (not destroyed) by nervous looks from Suki across the table.

Saturday, we walked in the park; Suki slipped her hand into mine. “Is this okay?”

“Sure!”

We walked. Sitting by the pond at Forge Dam with coffee, she began.

“Rick ... might there be an ‘us’?” I hesitated, not sure how to answer. She went on, “I’m clean, now, you know.”

“I believe you,” I smiled. “But that isn’t quite the point. Call me weird, but...” I told her about June. “I thought there was enough between us that, well, we could be together. But she didn’t see things the same way. It upset me. Suki, where are you going with your life? You’re out of one life. What’s your new one?”

Her head was down. She muttered, “I’m part time at our local café. Emily wants me to start back in school. Get some qualifications.”

“You need to do that.”

“Okay.”

“Suki, I...” I paused, swallowed, “I don’t say never, but you need to find someone more stable than me.”

“Stable? Oh, Rick ... that’s not it, is it?”

“No, love, it isn’t. Though I’m not in a position to settle down with anyone. What sort of music do you like?”

She shrugged. “Don’t listen much, but...” she reeled off two or three names that meant nothing to me and one who I thought was a rapper.

“See, I don’t even recognise those names. Sweetie, we’d have to spend time together over quite a long time. Do things together. I’d like to see you in college getting some qualifications.”

“Yeah ... Emily keeps suggesting I sign up for classes. She says I don’t need to work unless I want to, and they want to see me get some qualifications too. I suppose...” She hesitated. “But what should I do?”

“You need a foundation. The bedrock of education is Maths and English. History, geography. Another language. Do you have any Japanese?”

“A little, maybe. You know, I wonder ... about other girls like me.”

“Helping them?” She nodded. “Then social studies, perhaps. Psychology. Depends on how you want to help.”

“I don’t know what I don’t know. Frank says that.”

“So find out. Make a start.”

“Okay.” She sipped her drink pensively. “Will you come to see me sometimes?”

“Surely.”

I left early Monday morning before the traffic began to build, had breakfast at Forest Corner snacks, Ollerton Crossroads, coffee at Grantham, and lunch at Cambridge. I was back in Maldon in time to buy food for a couple of days, and settled back in Tranquillity with a disgruntled Bastet in time for tea. Incidentally ... have you ever come across someone being ‘gruntled’?

Thursday of that week. Midway through my morning four hours of counselling, between clients, a note from Reception. ‘Please ring Reverend Chesterman at the Rectory when you have time. She says it’s fairly urgent.’ I smiled at Amelia Harrison and thanked her; shocking me, her face cracked into what might charitably be called a smile too. What was the world coming to?

My next client was waiting, and I ushered him in to pick up where we’d left off the previous week. I didn’t have much hope of making a real impression on his substance abuse, but at least he was sober when he came to see me. I managed a couple of minutes before my last appointment and Dulcie asked me to call in at the Rectory after work. “And if you haven’t eaten, I’ll make you a sandwich.”

It was not on my way home. In fact, it was quite a long way out of my way home. I wondered at the summons. My curiosity was not sated immediately. Dulcie sat me down with a corned-beef and lettuce sandwich, and a mug of coffee. Her son played on the floor with a toy car. She waited until I’d finished and consumed a wedge of Bakewell tart.

“I’m afraid I have some unhappy news.” I raised an eyebrow in query. “Emily Firth rang to say Suki was in hospital. She was found drunk and insensible in the gutter near the hospital, and, well, the admitting doctor called in a psychiatrist. As soon as she was fit to go, she was taken to a psychiatric admission ward. I suppose it’s something that there was a bed available.”

“Oh. Shit.” I realised that was not the most appropriate expression in the circumstances. “Oh, I’m sorry, Dulcie. But that’s ... I don’t know what to say.”

Dulcie is ... special. She’s one of those people who you can’t help but open up to.

“I, um. Suki ... sort of fixated on me,” I said. “But, well...”

“I told her that you certainly couldn’t form a relationship with her now, and probably not for some time, if ever. I was quite explicit, in fact. You know I was a prostitute? Before I met Jesus?”

Shocked? “Um, no. I don’t think I knew that. Of course, the possibility of disease was an issue, but even without that I wouldn’t, um, have sex, just for the sake of sex. Besides, it would be inappropriate professionally and personally unhelpful to her. But I feel responsible...” I took a deep breath. “I tried to let her down gently. I really did – do – like her. But not enough. And now? Part of me wants to rush to Sheffield. But I think that would be a bad idea.”

“I think that’s right. Emily and Frank will see she gets support from church.” She paused and looked at me intently. “In this case, you are not your sister’s keeper.”

I sighed. “Okay. I know, really.”

“In a month, maybe, I’ll cut loose and we’ll both go to Sheffield. In my car, not on your motorbike.” She grinned, a gamine grin that took years off her.

I smiled, unwillingly. “Okay. That’s a deal.”

“There’s one other thing, Rick,” she hesitated.

“Oh?”

“Gillian Marshall. And Karen. They’re both ... fond of you, you know.”

I didn’t know what she was getting at, so I just nodded.

“How about another cup of coffee?”

“Um ... yes, please. That’d be great.”

I decided I needed to get away and think. Clear my mind, that sort of thing. So Friday morning I provisioned Tranquillity, and cast off late morning. I spent the night in Pyefleet Creek, and made it up to Hamford Water Saturday afternoon. I stayed there, quiet. Listening to the natural sounds – and the unnatural ones, faintly on the breeze, traffic, the cranes in Felixstowe container port, the horns of the big ships. I must have achieved some measure of peace, because I was alert and ready to leave in the small hours of Monday morning.

Despite the adverse current, I was well down the Wallet in the fresh Westerly breeze by the time the tide turned, and I was carried up the Blackwater, with a few tacks necessary before I reached Osea. Collier’s Reach was quite busy, and I motored the last couple of miles to my berth. I’d barely moored up and got my plank out than Bastet was off. She’d used her litter-tray, but didn’t much like it, so I supposed she’d been ‘holding it’ most of the day, expecting to be ‘home’. Well, that was okay. I stowed the mainsail and got the cover on, and boiled the kettle to make tea.

“Mister Rick! Hello!”

The voice of a nine-year-old cutie. I turned the gas down and went up into the cockpit. Karen was standing on the quay with her mother. “Hello. Want to come aboard?”

They’d been before, to feed Bastet (and to be introduced), so they were in trainers and clothes that didn’t matter too much. Karen almost ran along the plank and scrambled over the rail. Tranquillity’s decks are ply, painted with a non-slip deck paint, so I didn’t get too upset about people’s footwear anyway. We sat on the cockpit benches.

“We missed you,” Karen exclaimed, “so I made Mummy come along when we saw you passing the prom. Where you been?”

“One night in Pyefleet Creek, run up to Hamford water, night and a half there then a run back here. Quiet. Except for the wind and water, and the birds. And, of course, the rest of the world faintly on the breeze.”

“I wish I could do that.”

I spoke before engaging my brain. “If your Mum says it’s okay...”

Gillian spoke up. “Could I come too?”

I looked at her consideringly. “You know the facilities here. No shower. Sea toilet. You could share the fo’c’sle with Karen, or have a quarter berth each.”

“Could we try that? Just Friday evening to Sunday afternoon?”

I shrugged. “Depends on tides and weather. We could go next Friday – I’d have to check the times, but about seven in the evening. Come back Sunday, either morning about eight, or evening, the same.”

What was I thinking of?

“Wow! Thanks Mister Rick!”

One excited girl-child.

Discussions. Gillian is not accustomed to camping. Or boats. We agreed she would bring a sheet, duvet, and pillows, and that she and Karen would share the fo’c’sle. We would shop together, on Friday while Karen was in school, for food for the weekend; Gillian was going to do that herself, but I pointed out the limited facilities and she conceded my input would be useful.

While we were talking the kettle boiled and I made tea – hot chocolate for Karen. That child’s smile ought to melt the hardest heart.

But Gillian Marshall? Elegant, sophisticated, Gillian Marshall? In my little boat?

Yes. However unlikely, Gillian and Karen boarded Tranquillity, bearing those sports bags, at five-thirty, and dumped them in the fo’c’sle space. We’d loaded food much earlier, Gillian and I, just before having lunch – salads – in the Porthole Restaurant.

Tranquillity was still firmly resting on mud, but the water was rising. Another hour would have us floating, and a further half hour lifted out of the socket she’d made for herself, so we ate sandwiches – smoked salmon and cucumber, for heaven’s sake – and drank tea and fruit juice, sitting in the cockpit. With Karen craning round to try to take in every detail of the experience.

I had Karen at the wheel – yes, nine years old blonde cutie – as I cast off with the motor running. Talked her through getting into the fairway and staying there. “Head down the middle. If anything comes along, I’ll come back.”

Passing the barges moored up at the Hythe Quay, tidying fenders away, so as not to offend ‘proper’ sailors. Back in the cockpit to watch a little girl make the gentle turn to parallel the prom, without prompting. Then hoisting sails. Well, one sail, the main. Then back in the cockpit to unfurl the head-sail. Motor ticking over, as we’d have a headwind soon, down to Herring Point, but we were sailing.

Karen glanced at me. “Why’s the engine still going? Aren’t we sailing?”

“Yes, Sweetie. But in a minute we’re going to turn and face a head-wind, and we’re not ready to beat to windward in a narrow channel.”

She pouted a little. “Oh. Okay.”

Actually, we could probably have managed without a tack, but with the motor running I was able to give Herring Point a larger berth than otherwise. From then, it was easy sailing. Karen stood at the wheel, a wide smile on her face, while Gillian watched. She took the helm, nervously, as we reached down to Osea, then, later, went below with Karen to get her ready for bed. I don’t suppose either of us expected Karen to settle before we anchored, so the issue didn’t arise. We dropped the hook downstream of the old power station to get the meagre shelter of the land, and finally Karen deigned to go to bed.